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Alita
Alita, known in Japan as Gally (ガリィ, Garī?), is the protagonist of Battle Angel Alita and its sequel, Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, both written by Yukito Kishiro. She is known for her fighting prowess as a practitioner of the powerful cyborg martial art Panzer Kunst and skill at the most popular sport in The Scrapyard, motorball. Alita is occasionally referred to as "octopus lips" due to her pouty expression. Alita's background and history were briefly hinted at in Battle Angel Alita, but were not fully explored until Last Order, which reveals that Alita was highly instrumental in creating the world within which both manga series are set. Alita takes on a variety of roles through the manga, starting out as a hunter-warrior or licensed bounty hunter. She later becomes a motorball player, two years after which she is recruited by the Tipharean Ground Investigation Bureau to be an elite member of the TUNED, unknowingly serving as the basis for the development of their combat cyborgs known as the AR (Alita Replica) series which debut towards the end of Battle Angel Alita. In Last Order, she spearheads a team called the Space Angels which includes three of her replicas that competes in the LADDER-sponsored Zenith of Things Tournament. History From flashbacks starting in Volume 4 of Battle Angel Alita and further elaborated on in Last Order, Alita discovers that she was a Martian native (a human living on Mars) named Yoko von der Rasierklinge. In Kishiro's original series, Yoko was sent on a suicide terrorist mission. Her target was Earth's orbital ring, but at the penultimate moment her comrades were ambushed by an unknown opponent. Yoko escaped, but was left to crash on Earth. However, with the release of Last Order, this is no longer considered canon. Instead, Yoko was sent to upload a virus, known as "Program Guinevere", into Melchizedek. The virus disrupted the navigational systems of the five Leviathan colony ships, destroying four of them and killing 450,000 civilians, as well as caused a complete Gestalt breakdown in Melchizedek's organizational processes, from which it never fully recovered. This is known as the "Camlann Tragedy". She was captured shortly afterwards by the Type-V mutant Caerula Sanguis and sentenced to be burned up by atmospheric reentry to Earth as punishment for the terrorist attack. In the first book of the series, Yoko's damaged head and torso are found by exiled scientist Daisuke Ido while he searches the junkyard below Tiphares for parts to use in his cyborg repairs. Ido decides to fully rebuild her, and name her after his recently deceased cat, Alita. When the reanimated Alita suspects Ido of murdering women to provide her body parts, her guilt causes her to track and confront Ido. She discovers that he is a hunter-warrior, and that he is seeking the true killer himself. Her fight to protect Ido causes an instinctive recollection of the lost Martian battle technique called Panzer Kunst, as she quickly applies a single killing blow to the murderer. She decides to become a hunter-warrior herself, in which job Alita occasionally displays a disturbing bloodlust and love of battle. Alita's first battle as a hunter-warrior is against a powerful, body-snatching and brain-eating cyborg named Makaku, who destroys the original body that Ido had made for her. Ido rescues her, almost dying in the process. Feeling he has no other choice, he reconnects her head to an ancient cyborg body called a Berserker Body, which had been especially made for war. Equipped with a new, stronger body, Alita is again challenged by Makaku, who has become obsessed with Alita and reequipped himself with a new Power Body. After a long fight in the sewers beneath the Scrapyard, Alita kills Makaku. Shortly after becoming a hunter-warrior, Alita meets and falls in love with Hugo, a young boy who dreams of going to Tiphares. Unfortunately for Alita, her all-powerful berserker body proves to be a liability; since Hugo is a normal flesh-and-blood human, Alita is afraid that she couldn't even hold him close without accidentally tearing him to pieces. But what ends up killing Hugo is his obsession with Tiphares. Alita's drive and skill makes her the best hunter-warrior the Scrapyard has seen. Her skill and reputation as a hunter-warrior and motorball player elicit interest from Tiphares, the elite society suspended over the Scrapyard, against which she harbors some hostility. Eventually, after a confrontation with a resurrected and enhanced rival, Alita is forced to become an agent for Tiphares. Despite this ironic twist of fate, Alita thinks of herself as a possible bridge between the utopian Tiphares and the impoverished Scrapyard. Panzer Kunst Alita is a practitioner of Panzer Kunst, a powerful and long-dead cyborg martial art. Originally, the only memories Alita had of her training are of her master on a red mountain. In Last Order however, after Desty Nova Nova built her Imaginos body and, in the process helped unlock her repressed memories, Alita now remembers many things about Panzer Kunst including her master Gelda and fellow student Erica. Category:Battle Angel characters